FLCC> 80 miles of Hills or Casey's Cookies Ride

Sun May 20 10:10:43 EDT 2007

I used to have an aversion to riding dirt on a road bike, but 2  
seasons of cyclocross have cured that.  I had to be somewhere by  
11:30, and so had to swing off early.  Would loved to have ridden for  
another 2 hours.  It was a great group.  Sounds like the rest of the  
day was epic.

On May 19, 2007, at 9:56 PM, Donal Fitterer wrote:

> At 0830 today 16 souls set off to ride the Terrible Hills Century.  
> We had the Hawaii kid (Glenn, a little less tan because of all the  
> time in the bike shop), twe, Ano "CR1" Garcia, Abe "Better living  
> through chemicals" Struuck, Dr Dave "Painless" Heck, Mad Dog,  
> Rhino, ByLynn Braves, the Mighty Casey, Twinkie, the Prez, Cracker  
> Jack, Mike the "Artist" (he's a well known painter), Stevie Moto,  
> Peter "I crush your legs!" Blenkiron and yours truly. Bibian had  
> too much fun the night before and did not join us.
>
> Right from the beginning we knew that many of us, if not all would  
> not be completing the full century. My personal goal was to at  
> least ride all the hills through Bruce Hill Rd and return to East  
> Hill Plaza. This would include the following:
>
> Baker Hill Rd
> Yellow Barn
> Birish Settlement
> Buffalo Rd
> Brove School Rd to Bald Hill Rd
> Besemer Hill Rd
> Burns Rd to Bing Rd
> Bostwick Rd
> Blakesly Rd
> Bruce Hill Rd
> Burns Rd back to Rt 79
>
> The other requirement I forced upon myself was to ride with a 12-23  
> cassette and normal cranks. This decision was based upon a good  
> friend's opinion that he would start riding a 23 so he would gain  
> strength while hill climbing. He showed up on todays ride with  50  
> - 34 front rings and a 12 - 34 rear cassette!
> We left the parking lot within 10 minutes of the posted start time  
> and headed out towards Rt 366 with everyone wearing arm warmers,  
> leg warmers and vests. Once up Baker Hill Rd and past the  
> observatory I was down to just leg warmers. Mad Dog was our first  
> casualty as he could not get his cleats out of the pedals and ended  
> up doing a great dismount by holding on to me and slowly sliding  
> his butt to the ground. Turns out that Matt had new Northwave  
> custom made shoes and the cleats kept sliding on the smooth carbon  
> surface of the bottom of the shoe. We stuffed some dried cow pattie  
> material between the cleat and the shoe to act as a shim and that  
> solved the problem.
>
> We climbed Yellow Barn at a nice pace and then had an exciting  
> descent to our right turn on Ferguson. The excitement reached a  
> very high adrenalin level when  Bill didn't realize that we were  
> turning. Luckily , he was able to bounce off of  Matt and make the   
> turn.  Many of the folks were disappointed that Beam Hill Rd was  
> not on the cue sheet. We will try to work it in to future versions.  
> We made it all the way to Buffalo without any more mishaps and the  
> climb to the top was reasonable.  We had a wonderful descent to Old  
> 76 and then on to Brove Hill Rd that gave us a wicked dirt descent  
> down Bald Hill Rd. Stevie Moto decided not to ride his road bike on  
> the dirt and so was our first loss. Matt's day got even better as  
> he had our only flat of the day on Central Chapel. That was quickly  
> repaired and we were off for Besemer Rd. Matt made up for his bad  
> luck by winning the next two town line sprints up Besemer!
>
> Thirty miles and 20% grade were enough for many of the group and we  
> lost Dr Dave, Twinkie, Peter, Abe, Ano, and Bill. The rest of us  
> descended through the neighborhood to Park Lane and Rt 79. The Prez  
> climbed up Burns to Coddington and then turned off. We continued  
> climbing up Bing Rd and crossed 96B and then descended Stone Quarry  
> Rd. Glenn took the town line on Stone Quarry. Matt and Glenn  
> decided to do repeats on Cascadilla St while the rest of us made  
> our way over to Casey's house. Casey had to call home first to make  
> sure Judy wasn't traipsing through the house au natural.
>
> We refueled on some awesome Gingersnap cookies and loaded up the  
> water bottles for the last 3 climbs. Bostwick/Culver/Bostwick  
> wasn't too bad a climb but I could tell that my legs were getting  
> toasted. I was starting to re-think my goal of climbing Bruce. We  
> had another awesome descent down to Rt 327 and again a great high  
> speed drop down to Treman and Rt 13. We made it through the 96/13  
> interchange and on to Blakslee. Man, did it look steep on the  
> approach. I have to admit that I did the news paper boy wobble back  
> and forth across the road to get up the steepest parts. Mike and  
> Casey rode up like the hill was nothing! Once we reached the top  
> Casey did say that we were at the top of the ridge and "What's the  
> point in going back down and climbing up again?" I told Ernie that  
> we were rethinking our route to Bruce Rd. Ernie said, "Don, what is  
> the point of this ride if we don't do Bruce? The worst that is  
> going to happen is that we will have to walk!" Ernie won the  
> argument and so off we went to Bruce. Again, we had a fantastic  
> descent on Station Rd and then turned right onto Brown Rd. Brown is  
> one of the most beautiful roads in the county but it ends too  
> quickly at Bruce. Luckily for me Mike's right crank arm came  
> completely off his bike and he needed my tri-allen key to fix it. I  
> left the tool with him and headed up Bruce. It was worse than I  
> remembered with loose gravel and rocks the size of baseballs in the  
> road right at the steepest part of the climb, which is also a  
> switchback! The only way I made it up without having to walk was to  
> balance on the top stroke pedal, keep my weight back and then pull  
> myself and the pedal down using my arms and shoulder muscles. I did  
> this at least 10 times through the switchback. My arms got all  
> tingly and my vision shrank to a small tunnel directly ahead of my  
> front wheel. The gradient eased up for just a moment and I was able  
> to sit for 3 pedal strokes and then I had to stand again. The  
> gravel was so slippery that all my weight had to be over the rear  
> wheel. I passed Jack and then caught up to LiLynn. I could not pass  
> her because of the loose gravel so again I had to track stand at  
> the top of my pedal stroke and wait for her to move forward enough  
> so that when I took a stroke I wouldn't run into her. I am way  
> anaerobic when I finally get by her and  then it is  just shear   
> willpower to the top,  counting each stroke and lying to myself,  
> just 5 more and then I can stop.
>
> At the top of the climb we all regroup and wait for Casey and Mike.  
> After about 5 minutes Casey shows up and says that Mike can't put  
> the crank back on. Just then a woman with 2 dogs in crates in her  
> car stops and asks if we need help. She offers to go down and get  
> Mike and his bike but says there is no way she will drive into  
> Ithaca. We told her if she can just get him to the top of the hill  
> we can push him to town. The woman drives off and we started  
> imagining what was going to happen. Is she going to drive by with  
> Mike stuck in the crate and the dog sitting in the front seat and  
> we will never see him again and then read in the newspaper about  
> the Artist that became Alpo? Not too much longer we see Mike riding  
> up the road having fixed his cranked and escaping the crate.
>
> Onward back to East Hill Plaza finishing at 4pm and  80 miles of  
> training in the tank. Next time we will tackle the remaining hills  
> in Newfield and I will be using a 27 tooth cassette!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Don
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